07:50 09/07/2015
Enugu - The 17 electoral officers involved in the April 11
governorship election in Enugu State have maintained that it was
'credible, free and fair'.
They told the Governorship Election
Petition Tribunal sitting in Enugu on Wednesday that the election was
not marred by irregularities as alleged by the All Progressives Congress
(APC).
The Electoral Officer for Aninri Local Government Area,
Eric Ani, said that the election was conducted in line with the
Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) guidelines and
regulations.
“When I received the election materials, sensitive
and non-sensitive, I distributed them to the various polling units in
the local government area,” he said.
“The
card readers were used for accreditation of voters before the
commencement of voting and those wards that had problems with their card
readers were taken care of.
“When I got information from the
presiding officers that the card readers were malfunctioning, I
immediately deployed the ICT officer sent to us from the head office to
address the problems,” he said.
Ani
denied tampering with the election result from the area, adding that he
returned all the materials used for the election to the INEC
headquarters in Enugu.
He submitted that the scores awarded to the
political parties were lawful votes, pointing out that all the party
agents were present during accreditation, voting, counting and
announcement of results.
The electoral officer said the number of
votes cast was not higher than the number of accredited voters except
those with special cases in which incident forms were used.
“Our
records and documentation showed that there are some cases of people
whose finger prints were rejected by the card reader and incident form
was issued to them,” he said.
The Electoral Officer for Igboeze
South, Hyacinth Nwoba, who corroborated the submissions of Ani, said
that apart from the problems encountered by the card readers, the
governorship election was free, fair and peaceful.
Meanwhile, the
counsel to APC, George Ogara, stopped the cross examination midway and
urged the court to order the Resident Electoral Commissioner in the
state, Professor Chukwuemeka Onukogu, to provide all the materials used
for the election.
The tribunal gave the party two hours to produce the REC.
The APC requested the tribunal to allow it to cross-examine all the 17 electoral officers on their conduct of the election.
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